Parallel Replacement
by Shauds02
Summary: A grieving Robin is forced to put his pain aside when an old enemy reappears. Slade's back, and this time he's playing even dirtier.
1. Trouble at the docks

I love my teammates, really I do. They're my best friends, my third family, they can draw me out of myself when I get too dark and broody, when I get like 'him'. Beastboy's like a childish little brother, Cyborg's like a childish big brother, Raven's the level headed sister that lets them know when they're being too childish and Starfire's one of the kindest people I've ever met.

At breakfast time though, I can often find myself wanting to strangle half of them half to death. Breakfast at the Titans tower can best be described as a mixture of heated debates, weird smells, and general unpleasantness. I usually tried to get out of attending by claiming I'd been working late into the night.

The past few days that had actually been the case, but only because it would have been hard to sleep otherwise. Sitting alone in my room with cold Chinese food was even less appealing than making an appearance at the breakfast table. So I clamed a bowl of sugary cereal and tried to ignore them without being too obvious about it.

There were three rules to enjoying breakfast with the team. Don't get involved in the tofu vs. meat debate, don't accept any food from Starfire, and don't tick Raven off. Easy to remember, right? Well, I'd mistakenly broken one of them and was well on my way to breaking a second.

Those weird smells I mentioned earlier? Well they're the results of Starfire's cooking. That particular morning she'd attempted to singlehandedly put an end to the whole tofu vs. meat thing by mixing both items into a foul smelling bowl of... something. Beastboy refused to eat meat, and Cyborg refused to eat tofu, Raven was happy with her tea. That left only me to taste Starfire's creation.

"Please Robin?" She asked sweetly. "It would make the start of this day ever so pleasant."

There was just something about crushing the hope in those innocent eyes, I couldn't do it.

"Sure Starfire." I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth and took the offered spoon, dipping it slowly into the bowl of mush, then even slower up to my mouth. An alarm sounded at the computer. "I have to get that." I said hurriedly and dropped the spoon, running oy of the kitchen. "Put it in the fridge for later!"

I hit a few buttons on the console and looked up at the display. The source of the disturbance was at the docks. A small carrier that had docked for refueling, the 'Cornelius' was under attack.

"Breakfasts over." I said to the Titans who'd all assembled behind me. I added a silent thank you to whoever the perpetrator was fro getting me away from that food.

I lead the way on my R-cycle while the others followed in the car. We sped towards the docks while I got some more information on the cargo of the 'Cornelius', it was an international specialty carrier that shipped mainly chemicals for large companies. The most high profile chemicals on its ledger were stirkonite, rubegen and xenothium. The first two, as far as I knew, were used mostly in medicines, but it was the last one that had caught my eye.

Xenothium is incredibly unstable, so it's shipment is tightly controlled and very well documented. There were only two people I knew of who'd go through the trouble of stealing such a volatile chemical. Red X hadn't been seen for going on a year, he'd be running dry by now unless he'd found some new source.

We got to the docks, and at my cry of, "Titans, go!" my team sprang into action.

Starfire screamed out an alien battle cry and charged right into the thick of it, eyes and hands blazing green. Cyborg shouted out in glee, blasting the masked men aside with his concussion cannon while Raven hovered above the others chanting. One of the men raised a wooden crate in the air and aimed it at the girl; before he could let it go a green rhino tackled him into the water.

I made my way through the masked men to the small carrier, incase this was Red X's doing, I wanted to make sure we got a few words in before the rest of my team showed up. He knew things few people were supposed to know about me, and at the time I'd been too distraught to question him about it, but now I had to make sure he wouldn't be using that information against me. Granted, this wasn't exactly the best time either, but I needed those answers.

One of the men swung at me and I ducked, pivoting on my staff to deliver a kick to his chest that should have knocked the breath out of him and kept him down for at least a few minutes. This guy got back to his feet pretty quick though, and it took another higher kick that knocked him into the ocean to get him out of my way. This really wasn't Red X's style though, when he went for xenothium he went for it stealthily.

Two men blocked my path on the ship's boarding ramp. Staff at the ready I charged both turned to get me and I ducked low, slipping between and behind them. They tripped each other up when they spun around to chase after me. A few sharp jabs from my staff were all it took to knock one away, and right into the path of Cyborg's cannon. The other watched me closely, then made a move to grab me, a leaped onto the ships railing, spinning around to kick him in the face as I landed.

Instead of the muffled thud I had expected, a hollow clang rang out.

"What the?" I knocked the guy over and pulled of his mask. Underneath was the pitch-black face of a robot commando, the orange circle dented where my kick had made contact. Unless someone had found a stash of these things that he'd somehow left behind, things were going to get complicated.

I finished the robot off with a batarang and pulled out my communicator.

"They're robot commandoes." I said. "Be extra careful, I'm investigating now." There were calls for me to wait, but if this really was him I had to nip whatever he was planning in the bud. A two toned mask appeared in the window of the captains booth.

I kicked myself for believing, even for a little while, that he'd been gone for good. That he'd chosen now of all times to make a comeback was making me paranoid, almost as if he knew, when there was no way he should have. All the way up I was hoping that it was all in my head – it wouldn't have been the first time – but as soon as I threw open the door those hopes were dashed.

"Slade." I growled.

The man turned calmly to face him and the door sealed shut "Why Robin, I was expecting to see you sooner, now you're too late for my surprise."

"You're supposed to be dead." I swung my staff at the man, who blocked and threw me back against the door I felt some sharp pieces of glass digging into the back of my suit, but they couldn't pierce the tough Kevlar.

"You're such a child." Slade laughed and rushed at me.

I ducked under Slade's swing and retaliated with one of my own, knocking the man into the helm. He was back on his feet quickly and struck again. I fended off the blows with my staff, dancing around in the small place.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, knocking aside another of Slade's strikes.

"Oh, you haven't figured it out yet?" Slade delivered a powerful blow, the force of blocking it reverberated through my staff, numbing my arms for a moment. "I merely came to offer my condolences. How old was he? Nine, ten?"

I growled and doubled my attack on the man who just kept talking as he blocked.

"Don't look so surprised, everyone knows about it by now. The other Robin, the one who died."

"Shut up!" I practically screamed. This man had no right to talk about that, that he knew about it at all was sickening, like he was polluting the boy's memory just by holding it in his mind.

Slade soon got the upper hand, he maneuvered me into a tight corner and boxed me in. I could barely keep up with the blows he rained down on me, my staff even beginning to bend with force he put into each strike.

"You need to get over it, Robin." Slade said. I was too slow and he managed to wrap a hand around my staff, he held on tightly and he lifted me with the weapon, slamming me into the control console. "It was over a year ago after all." Slade kept me pressed against the console with my own staff. My arms were too weak from all the blocking to push it away.

The glass behind me shattered, and a bright green blast knocked Slade away from me. I was lifted to my feet by a cushion of black energy. The Titans piled into the room and stared the man down.

"Talk big all you want." Cyborg said. "We beat you before and we'll do it again."

Slade laughed and pulled out a detonator.

"Move!" I ordered and he leaped out the shattered viewing screen with my team just as the carrier was blown apart.

I landed on solid ground and hurried to check on my friends. Cyborg was a little dented, by looked fine, Starfire was floating down from the height she'd take off to, Raven was with Beastboy who was…oh no. The youngest member of the team was crying out, one leg bent at an unnatural angle.

"It hurts." He whimpered as Raven got in close.

"Sit still so I can see." He girl ordered, reaching for the injury.

"No, don't touch it." He tried to pull away and cried out when he jolted the bone.

"I went easy on you before." Slade said, appearing atop a stack of metal shipping containers. "Holding out hope that you might see the error of your ways and agree to being my apprentice."

"You're delusional!" I yelled, Cyborg, Starfire and I moving to stand protectively in front of our injured teammate.

"No, Robin you'll find I'm quite sane, and I won't be playing nice anymore." He pointed at Beastboy. "Consider this your warning."

"Titans, go!" I ordered and the three of charged at him.

He merely chuckled and dropped a smoke grenade. He was gone before any of us reached him, his laughter echoing in our ears.

.

.

.

Beastboy was settled into a bed in the medical room, his leg suspended to make sure it healed right. Starfire literally hovered over him, trying to offer him some get well soon food. Beastboy even hopped up on pain meds turned greener at the smell.

"He can't eat those ingredients with the medicine he took." I said, gently pulling her away.

"But then what will his body use to be keeping his 'strengths up'?" She asked.

"Pizza." Beastboy moaned,

"That actually sounds really good right now." Cyborg said.

"Then I will go and order the pizza." Starfire said and sped out of the room.

"I'll go make sure she doesn't order anything inedible." Raven glided out after her excitable friend.

"Thanks man." Beastboy said, looking uneasily at the bowl faintly glowing sludge on his at his bedside table.

I nodded curtly and removed the 'food', dumping it into a wastebasket, knowing Starfire would have forgotten about it by the time she came back. "You just rest up until your leg heals up." I made my way to the door.

"Where are you going?" Cyborg asked.

"I think we all need some rest after today." I said.

On my way to my room, I caught some of the girls' conversation.

"I am worried about Friend Robin." Starfire said. "Whenever that man shows up, he does not behave like himself."

"He'll be fine." Raven replied. "He knows Slade can be beaten and we'll keep close a close eye on him in case he tries something stupid."

"How will the putting of eyes on him prevent the being stupid?" Starfire asked.

"I didn't mean we'll literally put eyes on him." Raven sighed.

My door slip closed, blocking out the rest of what they said. I wasn't the one they needed to worry about. Beastboy was he only one who'd gotten hurt. I sank into the chair on front of my computer and began working. Having to push away thoughts of a small boy in bright colors, this wasn't the time.

I had to catch Slade before he hurt any of the others. When there was a knock at my door, I forced myself away from the screen to accept a plate of pizza.

"Thank you Starfire." I put on a smile, getting a small one back from the alien princess.

I had to catch him before I hurt them myself in my haste to get the whole thing over with.


	2. Meet the apprentice

Slade had covered his tracks well this time, really well. No matter how many times I went through the ships logs I couldn't find anything that could have caught his attention. If it was xenothium he was after then he'd really gone about it wrong. The ships explosion would have ignited every drop of the unstable chemical. Trying to remember if any robot commandoes had gotten away was fruitless, and I cursed myself for being so unobservant.

When I got back after a full night of combing through the ships wreckage for the umpteenth time without finding anything I went right back to my room. The computer got only a cursory glance before I flopped onto my bed, my spinning mind warring with my tired body.

A few hours later, the best I'd managed was a light doze somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. Sounds drifted from the kitchen, mixing with the sounds from my almost dreams. For a minute I felt I was dozing on a sofa in the parlor, a cooling mug of coffee in my hands on a school day. It felt warm, cozy and I was just waiting for the hand that would gently pull me to my feet and tell me it was time to leave.

When it didn't come my eyes cracked open, and all warm feelings were gone when they fell on the calendar tacked onto my wall. For a while I just laid still and stared at the blocks and numbers. 'Everyone else will be strong.' Slade was still out there, was probably planning something that would flip the world over again, but the blocks on the calendar were getting so much closer to a date I'd never have to circle. There were times for weakness. It was painfully obvious I wouldn't be sleeping any time soon, so I dragged myself up off the bed and straightened my uniform.

The meat vs. tofu debate was going on in the medical room instead of the kitchen, so I grabbed my usual bowl of cereal and headed there. A quick glance at a mirror was enough to make me grateful for the hundredth time that my teammates didn't know me as a cheerful person. Starfire was trying to feed Beastboy the same concoction I'd almost eaten the day before, and Raven was trying to explain ti her that the boy didn't eat meat. Lucky.

"Feeling better today?" I asked and suddenly all eyes were on me, shock evident on their faces. "What?" I smirked, taking a bite of my cereal.

"I told you he was fine." Beastboy grinned, waving his arms at me. "He knows Slade's gonna be a pushover this time. Hey, I told Raven if I was a snake my leg wouldn't matter, but she won't let me."

"It won't heal properly if you don't keep it still." The girl said, not looking up from the cup of morning tea she was brooding over.

"Aw, it can heal later, tell her Robin." Beastboy whined.

I'd never noticed before that moment just how young my teammate was. At thirteen he'd been just old enough to be considered a teen, and the extra birthday he'd had since then really hadn't made much of a difference. What did normal fourteen year olds even do when they were stuck with broken legs? What did ten year olds do?

"Cyborg, have you found anything on the cargo of the 'Cornelius'?" I asked, putting my previous thoughts away to debate over later when I actually had the time.

"Aside from the xenothium, nudda." Cyborg said. "Not unless Slade's looking to go into medicine. Stirkonite's mostly just used in mild antidepressants and rubegen's an air purifier." He shrugged and shoved a sausage into his mouth, grinning at Beastboy's cry of disgust at the juices that escaped.

"Dude." Beastboy shuddered. "But Rob, seriously the snake thing. I could totally take out some robot commandoes." He looked at me, his eyes wide and pleading while Raven chose to hit me with a glare that would have made anyone's blood run cold.

"Keep digging." I told Cyborg and finished off my breakfast. "You follow the doctor's orders Beastboy." I smirked at Raven, who relaxed the slightest bit and turned her glare to the green boy when he tried to start up a new bout of whining.

"And what tasks will occupy the rest of us?" Starfire asked. "How will we come up with the plan of capturing Slade?"

"I'm going to follow up on the xenothium." I said. It was the only lead we had, and not everything could be pulled off computers. Slade had to have attacked that particular ship just to blow up its valuable cargo. Besides, there was another errand I'd need to run that would take past that part of town.

"Alone?" Starfire asked. Everyone else in the room tensed up, only Starfire's big eyes showing the worry I knew they all felt.

That was my fault, to them the word 'Slade' had become synonymous with a reckless, unstable leader. If I went off on my own they'd all be too suspicious, and if Slade dropped something big, they wouldn't trust me to lead them through it rationally.

"Raven." I waved her over. "Star can keep an eye on your patient for a few hours, right?"

If I had to take someone with me, it might as well be the one who'd ask the least questions.

.

.

.

If you wanted to know about xenothium in Jump City, there was one man you went to. Professor Chang had escaped from prison a few months ago and retreated to a new hide out, and as far as I was concerned it was just easier to leave him there. He was easy to monitor, and I could get to him before he tried anything, being in prison would have just made him more sneaky in his illegal dealings.

"How did you get in here?" The scrawny man said, backing away from the teens that had just appeared in his laboratory. He reached for a weapon, but it was pulled out of his hand a second later by a few words and a wave of Raven's hand,. The iron grip of her dark energy also held him against the wall for good measure.

"A shipment of xenothium was blown out of the water two days ago." I looked over some of the brightly colored chemicals lining the walls. None of them were red, but I had a feeling that very few could be considered 'safe', Chang wasn't as much of a one trick pony as he led people to believe after all.

"That had nothing to do with me." Chang said, defensively throwing his hands out in front of him. "I would never waste such pure samples."

"It wouldn't be the first time." I said, if they were visible I would have raised an eyebrow. This was the man who'd made a xenothium bomb capable of destroying the whole city. He really shouldn't have been surprised that we'd come to when we found out someone else had done so as well, even if it was on a much, much smaller scale.

"Please, if I'd been the one to set that up, you wouldn't be here." Chang snarled, and tried to pry himself out of Raven's hold. I gestured for her to release him and he fell back to the ground a crumpled bag of cloth and bones. Yeah, prison really hadn't suited this guy well. If I hadn't known for a fact that it had been Slade I would have been sure that the whole thing was some king of revenge plot of Chang's.

"I could have made a bomb five times that size with a fraction of what was lost." The man picked himself off the ground and patted imaginary dust from his clothes. "That imbecile Slade had no idea what he was doing." He growled and stepped farther away from the sorceress, keeping a weary eye on the cloak hiding her arms.

"We never said anything about Slade." I said, taking a small amount of satisfaction in the way he flinched. "And even without your expertise he came closer to wiping us out than you ever have."

"That must really bother you." Raven tapped at a beaker filled with a bright blue liquid. "Business must have been pretty slow with how little xenothium is coming into Jump. It's not so easy to make here, is it?" She turned to me, her blank expression unchanged. "This has-been doesn't know anything, we're better off tracking down Red X."

I watched Chang's face closely as she spoke, and while he's been feigning calm pretty well before, the mention of Red X launched him into a fury.

"That brat's the only reason you made it out alive last time!" The ugly snarl his bright red face was twisted into made him look almost like his old self. I knew I'd definitely have to keep a closer watch on him in the future. "If it weren't for him using up every scrap of the components that come into this city I would have killed of everything here long ago!"

He didn't know anything, and I still had things to do before the day was out, there wasn't time to waste on Chang. I shifted my tired eyes – regretting the lost sleep right then – to my teammate to tell her we should get going, and the man pulled a weapon out of his arms.

"I'll settle for tow dead birds!" He cried, firing a red hot laser at Raven. Her violet eyes widened and a portal opened to carry her away, but I was already between her and the blast, a name that wasn't hers on my lips and a birdarang flying from my fingers.

His shot missed and my blade was lodged in his shoulder, blood staining his white clothes red. It wasn't enough and I charged forward. My fists crashed into his scrawny body, there was no grace or skill in the blows, just a whole mountain of rage that had been dredged up at his words. He cried out, but I barely heard it, all I heard was 'dead birds' and I was struck by the irrational notion that he knew too.

"Robin!" Raven pulled bleeding man away from me and put herself between us.

I looked into her cold violet eyes, then back at the terrified, bloody man cowering behind her. That same blood was on my hands and the only reason my knuckles weren't as broken as his nose was because of the thick, strong gauntlets covering them.

"Call the cops to pick him up." I said, turning to leave the building. I didn't want to have to look at him for even the amount of time that would take, so I waited for my teammate outside.

It was just past noon, and the air outside was still as crisp as autumn could make the air of any city. I breathed it in deeply, partially hidden in the shadows of the back alley. It took a while for Raven to follow me out and I flinched at the thoughtful frown on her face. Leaders weren't supposed to go off the rails like that.

"He didn't know anything." She said simply and started walking. "We should get back before Beastboy tried to get out of bed."

As we walked through the back streets of Jump, my eyes roamed over the displays of the few stores we passed. Neither of us spoke, but I knew Ravens mind was coming up with all sorts of answers to the questions she wouldn't ask about my outburst. That was the thing about empaths and psychic bonds, she knew what I'd felt, and the sort of things that would make me feel that way, but nothing specific.

If I left her she'd just come to the conclusion that the thing with Slade was making me more paranoid than usual and I'd panicked when I thought she was in danger. That was close enough to the truth that I didn't feel guilty about the deception.

We weren't even close to the tower when our communicators went off.

"We got a distress signal from a warehouse in the north part of town." Cyborg's voice crackled over the speaker, already in the T-car. "Meet us there!"

"Us?" Raven asked. "Where's Beastboy?"

"Friend Beastboy has been resting peacefully since I offered him the get well soon porridge." Starfire chirped from the passenger seat.

"Yeah, that stiff smelled pretty funky." Cyborg said, an apologetic look on his face. "We're almost at the warehouse, so you guys should hurry." He reached for the camera and I had the sick feeling that if he turned it off something bad was going to happen.

"Wait for backup!" I said, but the screen had already blanked out and my attempts to restart the connection hailed only static.

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.

.

That our rush to the warehouse was in broad daylight somehow made it worse. There were no city lights, no fog or rain to ad a sense of surrealism to the situation. It only took us half an hour to get there, but the worry in my gut made it feel hours longer. They weren't answering their comms and it was all I could do to keep up my cool façade.

Even if she could tell how I felt, Raven didn't need the added anxiety of seeing it too. I was the leader, I'd handle it and get my team out safe. That was my job and I would do it right. That's what I told myself over and over until the blinking dot on my screen was right below us.

Raven dropped me and grabbed hold of a beam protruding from the side of the poorly maintained warehouse to slow my decent. As soon as we got near I found the cause of our inability to reach them via comm-link. A small machine settled inconspicuously next to a trashcan on the side of the road.

"Signal jammer." I crushed it with my staff and waved Raven behind me. As powerful as she was, she wasn't invulnerable, and neither were Starfire and Cyborg. To have been taken out so fast there had to have been some kind of trap, and the lack of sound from the dilapidated building gave me no illusions as to the state of almost half of my team.

Around back we found the T-car surrounded by trash. Cyborg's beloved car was toppled on its ruined side, smoke pouring out of the engine still, by the looks of it the car had been hit from the front, then spun out of control scraping a few trash cans and dumpsters along until it smashed into brick wall, making a sizable hole.

Raven flew over to the car and shook her head, they weren't in the car, and I couldn't help the sigh of relief that escaped my lips at the knowledge. Cyborg loved that car, and would be crushed that it was totaled, but if they'd made it out alive I couldn't find it in myself to be overly worried about that.

I cautiously stepped through the hole in the wall, more careful than I needed to be of the many uneven bricks that were scattered along the ground. The second it took my eyes to adjust to the dark space was all the time I had to prepare myself for what I saw next.

Intermingled with the bricks were a few wrecked robot commandoes, or pieces of robot commandoes. Some were partially melted, others looked like they'd been literally torn apart. Knowing that whatever happened, my teammates had put up a fight would have been enough to lift my spirits, but there weren't nearly enough pieces for them to have been taken out by the bots.

"Robin!" Raven whispered harshly from where she was kneeling on the ground.

The brilliant red hair fanned out at the ground at her knees was all I needed to see and I was there. I felt for a pulse and nodded for Raven to lift the debris from the girl's body. Starfire groaned as I gently lifted her head from the ground, clearing her airways , and pillowed it on my folded cape.

"Star." I whispered and brushed her sticky, matted hair out of her bruised face.

Raven quickly found Cyborg, his chest plate had been ripped off and there were some sparks shooting out of the exposed circuitry. Looking closer there were sharp pieces of robot commandoes wedged between his joints and the machinery in his chest. His cybernetic eye was smashed to pieces, the wires poking through the broken glass.

It took some prodding from Raven, but he managed to open the other eye, and my heart sped up when I saw that it was undamaged, and watching us closely.

"Slade… still," he groaned and Raven carefully helped him into a sitting position, his damaged hand flicked towards a door on the other side of the room. His mouth opened and closed like he was trying to say more, but his throat just couldn't push out the words.

"It's okay." I rested a hand on the shoulder that wasn't missing its plating, pushing away my misgivings I tried for a smile. "You'll be fine, Raven's going to take you home."

Raven looked ready to object, but I shook my head firmly. This wasn't something I was going to back out on. It was too dangerous to leave them there while we confronted Slade, and she would be able to get them both out a lot faster than I could.

"You can't do this alone." Raven said, her eyes like steel.

"That's an order." I said. "They need you now, I'll be careful, now go." I pointed at the hole in the wall. No more of them were getting hurt when there was something I could do to stop it.

"Fine." She said and lifted them both on metal sheets.

There were remnants of a security system leading up to the door, but they'd all been destroyed in the fight that had injured my teammates. The closer I got the easier it was to hear the faint sounds coming from the other side.

I lifted myself into the dusty sub-ceiling and crawled along it to the main part of the warehouse.

There were more robot commandoes crawling all over the large space. Some were standing guard at the grimy windows and the huge steel entrance at the edge. The smaller door leading into the back room was being watched by a pair of the bots as well. Slade himself stood in the center of the room, his arms crossed while he watched the rest of the bots loading crates into several mismatched trucks.

With his face hidden it was hard to get a read on him, but I could see he wasn't even looking in my direction, his gaze shifting to the guarded doors every few minutes.

There were a lot of bots, way too many for me to have gotten through them and Slade. Only when enough time had passed that I was sure Raven had gotten the others out I started planning. I didn't know what the warehouse was storing, but anything really valuable would have been kept in a better maintained building. Some higher powered explosive birdarangs would be enough to get most of the bots out of the way if I did it fast enough.

A bigger, heavier looking robot stepped out of a shipping container, some kind of blaster in his hands, and began cycling through the huge room. A new model, and I had no idea of what it was capable of. My eyes narrowed, if it hadn't been Slade himself, then it was likely the new model was what had beaten Starfire and Cyborg. Even if I didn't bring Slade in right away, I wanted that thing in pieces before I left, that had to put some kind of dent in his plans.

With my weapons ready I watched the bots closely, memorizing their movements and trying to find the best order to take them out, keeping a closer look on the new model. Something shifted in the shadows, and my attention shifted instantly from my targets to take in the new variable.

Slade either didn't notice, or didn't care as something detached itself from the shadows and slunk past him. It moved and ducked behind crates and forklifts too fast for me to make out it's shape, but it's target was clear. The small shaped stopped behind a truck in the new models patrol path.

I just made out the flashes of black and orange before the robots head dropped to the ground with a loud 'clunk'. The sound echoed through the large space. Instead of ducking back into hiding, the shape stopped, giving me my first clear view of it.

My first thought was that he was small. Then I noticed the militaristic, orange accented black body suit and the helmet covering most of his face. He sat down indian style, the little visible of his expression blank while he began systematically dismantling the bot. Momentary relief at having any kind of ally was squashed when Slade marched up to the boy.

"What are you doing?" Slade asked, as sharp an edge to his voice as there could be without raising it.

"I'm bored." The boy said, his high voice carrying even less emotion than even Raven's and what little I could see of his expression blank.

Slade marched up to the young boy and loomed over him. The boy's eyes were hidden by a dark visor, but even still I knew he wasn't looking at the man. His head was tilted slightly while he stared up at the ceiling. Slade turned, satisfaction practically radiating off him when he turned to follow the boy's gaze.

"Robin." The man said. "I'm glad you've finally arrived.

I was out of the sub ceiling before he'd even finished speaking, birdarangs flying from my finger tips to lodge themselves in the robot commandoes. Those few that survived the projectiles were quickly taken out with a few blows from my bo-staff.

"You're going to pay for what you did to the Titans." I took a firm stance and brandished the staff before charging right for him.

"The Titans?" Slade's loud chuckle echoed through the large space and he knocked away my blows with the metal guards on his arms. "I didn't lay a finger on them." I kept up my assault, keeping him on the defense. Slade caught the staff and leaned in close. "That was your fault." He leaned back and head butted me so hard I saw stars and had to stagger back.

I dropped some smoke pellets while I stumbled back to regain my footing. I was leaning against a stack of crates when I heard his voice again.

"They would have been fine if you'd shown up sooner." His voice drifted at me through the smoke.

"You're mind games aren't working in me this time Slade." I said watching his hazy figure move through the smoke. I threw some explosive marbles at his feet and charged forward to take advantage of the lack of balance that caused.

I'd gotten in a few good hits before he grabbed hold of my staff and tugged it out of my hands, pulling me forward into a punch I just barely dodged.

The smoke cleared up enough that I could see the gleam in his one visible eye when he waved a hand at the boy who was still messing with the parts of the broken robot. "I had to find some way of entertaining him before he wandered off again."

"You don't really think I'm dumb enough to believe a little kid did that." I spat and the kid looked up at me, tilting his head slightly again.

"I should introduce you…" I could practically hear the smirk in Slade's voice "… to my new apprentice." "You'll be surprised at what he can do." Slade grabbed a fistful of the boy's short orange cape and pulled him to his feet. "I know I was, but he could use another field test." Slade patted the back of the boy's head. "If you're up to it."

I looked the boy over, but this new insight didn't make appear any more dangerous. His posture was loose, not tending up even when Slade pushed him a step in my direction. He was even smaller than Beastboy, and there was nothing in the way he carried himself that even suggested he was a threat, he wasn't even looking at me, but up at a stationary fan.

"You don't have to fight." I said, holding out my hands in a show of piece. "I can help you get away from Slade. Do you have parents?" That got a little twitch of a frown from the boy. "I'll help you see them again."

He turned to Slade slowly, then back at me. The man cocked his head to the side, nothing in his posture giving anything away.

"Can I leave now?" The boy said, and I tensed up for when Slade inevitably lashed out at the request. I was ready to grab the kid and run if I had to, but his next words stuck me in place. "This talking is boring."

"So make it interesting." Slade said.

The boy fell forward, and for a moment I thought he'd hit the ground, but he went with the momentum and used it to rush at me. I was prepared for some kind of super power, and braced myself.

The vicious uppercut got me by surprise, before I could adjust he spun around to crash his heel into me with a powerful sidekick. He spun again to deliver another kick, but I ducked out of the way in time and caught his leg, tossing him away. Moving with the fall he rolled back onto his feet, skidding back a little before he sprang up and charged at me again, not pausing for a second.

His form was loose while lurched forward almost like he was drunk, and his attacks looked sloppy and uncoordinated. It look me about a millisecond to realize that that was the whole point of his fighting style when his fist clipped the side of my head almost unbalancing me, and definatley giving me a headache. It was hard to read, the speed and power behind every blow making it hard to adjust.

A palm strike knocked him back again and I had a chance to look for Slade before the boy swinging at me again. I grabbed the kid's arm and pulled it roughly behind his back while Slade got into a truck. I grabbed hold of the kids arms and pulled it behind his back, he dropped to the ground and ducked under my knees, almost smashing my face into the ground.

From behind me brought down an elbow on my back, and pain rippled all along my spine from the impact. I spun and kicked the back of his head, misjudging his light weight and sent him knocked him forward way harder than I'd meant to. The loud crack that echoed through the room when his head crashed into the hard concrete ground and bounced back up almost had my heart in my throat.

He groaned and lay still just long enough to make me think I'd seriously hurt him before his hands twitched into fists and he slowly began pulling himself to his knees. He looked up at me, revealing the deep crack in his helmet, and the blood trickling down his chin. He got his shaky legs under him, but his combat boots slipped back and his head fell back to the ground.

I didn't ask if he was okay as he tried again, or let down my guard, but I'm sure my concern was plain on my face. Giving a child brain damage wouldn't have gone over well with anyone. I watched the boy for a moment, then went to go after Slade, who was loading a crate into the back of a truck. I didn't get very far before a sharp pain erupted in my left calf and my leg fell out from under me, a cry of pain on my lips.

I rolled to my feet quickly and watched the other boy drag himself to a crouch, a bloody knife clutched in one shaky hand. He brushed away the blood on his chin and lurched at me again.

The erratic swings of the blade needed way more attention to dodge than his fists would have. His attacks were concentrated on my left side, and every step I took sent pain shooting up the leg. I spied my staff lying on the ground where Slade had thrown it and scooped the weapon up.

All it took was a few quick jabs to get the knife out of the boy's hand. He used both arms to defend himself from the blows, and I could see that each block sapped more strength from him. I found a gap and took it, smashing my staff at the side on his head, sending him sliding sideways and crashing into some crates. I approached cautiously, doing my best to understate my limp.

"Are you done yet?" I asked.

"You're a hero." The boy whimpered and rolled over. The crack in his helmet had widened, and I was as grateful as I could have been that he had the thing on. Going easy on the kid had gotten me a knife to the leg, and if he didn't have the head gear he'd at the very least have a nasty concussion. His black gloved hand felt around the crack and he groaned. "It hurts."

It wasn't a taunt, and I was taken back at the genuine confusion in his high voice. That… wasn't the response I'd been expecting, at all.

"You don't get to complain when you attacked first." Was the only reply I could think of.

He looked up at me, a frown on his lips before the muscles in his face relaxed again.

"Apprentice!" Slade called. The boy sprang up and tackled me into and open shipping container. My breath was knocked out of me when my back slammed into the cold metal. By the time I was on my feet the boy was running out, the container door slamming shut behind him.

I heard a loud crash and stumbled out and was greeted only by the screeching of tires. The larger metal doors had been knocked off their frames in Slade's escape and one of the trucks were gone.

Sighing, I leaned against the container with a resounding thump and slid to the ground. Blood trickled from my leg and dripped onto the hard concrete, there was no way I'd be able to catch up with the state I was in. I stayed like that until my communicator beeped.

Raven's worried face appeared on the screen.

"Robin, are you okay?"

I leaned my aching head against the container and looked at the night sky peeking through the busted door.

"I'm fine. How are the others?"


	3. Red X in trouble

Life sucked, at least mine did, but not sticking out would be a pretty big slap in the face to the reason I still had mine, well a bigger slap in the face, so I was pretty much obligated to suck it up and stick it out. Still, that didn't mean I had to be particularly happy about it.

I ducked under the very sharp, blade of a sword and slid under the assassin who'd swung it, coming up with a round house kick that knocked him into an approaching group of his friends. They went down like a stack of dominoes, giving me enough time to slip past the ornate archway behind them and keep up my mad dash though the heavily guarded fortress I'd gotten myself caught in.

That, right there was one major reason life sucked. I went through some trauma, made some – well not bad per say, but morally questionable – choices, then decided to take a break from the whole costumed-whatever thing to figure it all out and get myself back on some sort of track. It took only a year for things to go to hell after that, and maybe it's a little arrogant of me to think the whole thing is because I took my little break, but I've never been known for being humble, and come on, can you really blame me?

A shuriken flew right by my face and nicked the fabric of the stolen league of shadows mask covering my face as I ran. When they're getting curb stomped by Batman it's easy to forget just how well trained these guys are, when you're alone, surrounded and haven't been in a real fight for over a year you remember real fast.

I turned a corner and almost got a barrage of throwing knives to my face, falling into a cartwheel to get out of the way, I crashed through a surprisingly unlocked wooden door and onto an overhanging platform. The cartwheel turned into a flip onto the railing and up to a higher balcony, knocking away another group of assassins, landing with a flourish, and taking a quick bow.

Peering over the railing a got a look at the groaning pile of human flesh and frowned.

"Come on, no one's enjoying the show?" I chuckled and opened the door behind me, then promptly slammed it in the faces of fresh pursuers hard enough that I'm sure I gave the guys at the front concussions. I flipped onto a cable and ran across the line to the other side of huge, assassin packed room below.

Really, I could get paid for pulling of tricks like that and all those guys did was throw knives at me, how's that for a tough crowd? I would have done a few flips on my way to the other side, maybe win them over, but gunfire joined the sound of footsteps and I had to make it snappy.

A literal 'league of assassins' and Talia is the only one Ras thinks to give a gun to? Having to pick the lock of a door in the short period of time it would take for her to reload wasn't really the time to be jinxing things, but how did the league last that long with that kind of leadership. I didn't get the door open fast enough and one of Talia's bullets managed to clip my shoulder before I managed to slam it shut behind me.

Seconds later I was under fire again, I came to a hallway lined with tall stained glass windows that tinted the little light coming through a epileptic array of colors. The loud stomping of approaching assassins that really could have been silent as mice didn't do anything to put me at ease no matter how pretty it was.

The only exit that wasn't running into the small army coming at me and dying was a steel reinforced door with keypad. I wasted a precious half-minute getting the thing open before the sickly green light that poured out of the stairway into what could have been a literal hell to move never going down there to the very top of my priorities list.

Dying? Okay, not great but okay. Dying right next to a Lazarus Pit? Nope.

The red-robed men climbing that creepy staircase towards me only solidified that plan. I backed up as the hallway filled with assassins, luckily too many of them for any kind of ranged attack to be effective, but also an excessive amount to fight. I heard the very distinctive tapping of Talia's footsteps and took the only out I could get.

The sound of shattering glass accompanied my tumble out the window and into the sunny day outside. I had only a moment to savor Talia's shocked face and think that escaped like this usually worked better at night before I hit the frigid waters and survival was the only thing I could afford to think of.

It _was_ night when I finally pulled my tired, sore body onto a sandy beach and I wasn't nearly as happy about that as I should have been. The tiny bit of cover darkness provided really didn't help with the muscle fatigue cold and salt water put on me, only adding to the – I don't want to say agony, but the sluggishly bleeding shoulder wound really, really hurt.

The weight of the water soaking into the heavy suit only made moving feel like more of an impossible task, so I just laid still while rivulets of the salty liquid ran off me. The mask was sticking to my face, making pulling in the oxygen my lungs were craving a hundred times harder so I mustered the strength to pull it off before a fell into a state just enough to notice if someone tried to kill me.

Hours later a barely audible clicking had me cracking open my eyes. In the early morning light a saw a crab scuttling towards me. A wave washed over it, and it hunkered down moving again. It raised a claw near myself and I flicked it away.

"Don't even think about it." I rolled onto my back with a huff, squinting at the sky before pulling myself up off the ground.

.

.

.

The whole trip had been beyond pointless. I fell into bed as soon as I got back to my shabby safe house without bothering to change out of the bodysuit. As much as I wanted to wash off the sand and salt, taking some time to relax my tense body was just too much to pass up. So I pulled the scratchy pillow that you could have convinced me was the softest thing in the world over my face and tried to shut down my mind.

' _This is what trying to play the hero gets you.'_

An incessant beeping kept me from relaxing completely though and I reached over to the nightstand to pick up the offending device. The alert was for a break in at one of my other safe houses. I don't believe in signs, or fate or whatever, but I do believe that some things just can't be coincidences.

According to the device in my hand it was about time I checked in on those little heroes in Jump. ' _I'll leave in the tomorrow.'_ I rolled over, a yawn on my lips and ready to sleep the day away. My door blew off its hinges and I leaped off the bed, tossed it over and ducked down behind it while bullets pummeled the steel frame. _'Or I can just go now.'_

I sighed while slipping the mask back on, and for the second time in as many days, I was leaping out of a shattered window, ticked off assassins hot on my trail.

.

.

.

The Jump City safe house was in about as good a shape as I expected when I had to climb in through the window didn't make me any happier to see it in shambles. After trekking all across Europe too loose the league, maybe I was just hoping I'd be able to get a little bit of a break.

The robot commando – stupid name – took long enough to actually notice me that I could pry open the loose tiles under where the bed had been and grab a black case. Then it spun and pelted me with laser blasts. Better by far than bullets at least. I made my escape through yet another window – if windows were mirrors then I'd be cursed with bad luck until forever at the rate I'd been going the past few weeks.

Jump was way cleaner than most of the other places I'd been hiding, and the alleys weren't nearly as cluttered, so hiding should have been a lot harder than it was, but Slade's tinker toys weren't nearly as persistent as Ras's assassins.

When I was a safe distance away I caught a bus and reveled in the relative safety of public transport as I sank into the padded seat and rested my head against the cool glass of the window. Even if they figured out where I was, it was unlikely they'd follow me to Jump.

I'd made up my mind to stay on the bus until the last stop and catch up on a little bit of sleep when spotted someone vaguely familiar at one of the stops, someone who really shouldn't have been there and was out of site before I really had a good look at him.

Tired enough that I was close to tears at the knowledge that I'd miss another chance to rest, I dragged myself out of the comfy seat and stepped off the bus.

I picked the darkest, scariest – really not that scary, I mean this was Jump City – alley to turn into. I jammed my hands into my jean pockets and turned towards the source of the sensation prickly at the back of my mind.

"Okay Mini Slade, you can come on out now." I said, not bothering to keep the exhaustion from my voice.

The kid, now decked out in his black and orange bodysuit slipped out of the shadows, his mouth twisted a little in what might have been confusion as he studied me, really it was obvious who he worked for.

"You're smaller than I expected, Slade know you're off your leash?" I asked.

He looked at me for a second longer then turned and left without a word.

"Little weirdo." I scoffed. I'd taken about two steps when another robot commando rushed up to me. By that point I'd had about as much of running for my life as I could take, I took an X shaped blade from the case at my side and spun, slicing deep enough into the robots neck that I severed pretty much everything linking its processor to the rest of its body. "Not the time."

It crashed to the ground and I knelt down, breaking open it's torso to reach in and remove a palm-sized component. League was one thing, I got myself into that, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with Slade too.

.

.

.

I was extra careful getting to my next safe house, this one nice and close to the docks with a lovely view of the Titan's Tower.

I hooked the memory bank I'd gotten off the robot into a closed system and read the read outs with only a vague interest as I finally took the time to see to my shoulder wound properly.

Robin, what was it about Slade's sick little obsession with the kid that he just couldn't let go? I chewed on a sandwich and kept reading. I felt just bad enough for the Boy Wonder that I considered heading to the tower and warning him about the robots programmed with his kill orders.

Still not bad enough to actually do it though, besides, the last time I was in that tower wasn't something I thought either of us wanted to deal with. Still, didn't mean I wouldn't tell at all, I'd just do it a way that I could get some fun out of it.

Spinning my chair to another screen, I shopped around for any interesting merchandise moving into the city.

A week ago there'd been a shipment of Xenothuim that would have been perfect for my big comeback, but I'd been held up in Spain while someone else had gone and blown it up, seriously, who did that to something so valuable? A few more clicks told me Chang was in prison, and that meant his fully stocked lab was easy pickings.

I stopped by the lab on my midnight grocery run. To say the place was a mess would have been a massive understatement. Broken glass and machinery littered the ground along with puddles of some strong smelling chemicals. There were even some splotches of dried blood that I stepped gingerly over as I made my way to the back.

There were no traces of xenothium, at least not where anyone would care to look. You steal from a guy often enough and he gets sneaky, so you get sneakier. Chang had been trying and failing to hide his stashes of the stuff from me as long as I'd had the suit.

Whistling a pop song, I pulled one hand out of my pocket and reached behind a computer monitor to yank out an engraved cylinder. I went back to the overturned throne-like chair and inserted the cylinder into a slot neat the armrests.

One side of the radiation proof chair slid open and the dark lab was bathed in dim red light. "Beautiful." I smirked and collected my prize.


	4. Remembrance

Most anniversaries are times when people come together to celebrate something, birthdays, weddings, things like that. My own birthdays hadn't been a big deal the past few years, most of my friends didn't even know what it was, and going home was kind of a sore spot for me so the most I'd gotten was a phone call.

There were some days on my calendar that I did consider a big deal. Two of those were the other kind of anniversary though, and the first time I'd have to commemorate one of them was coming up real fast. It had taken me a while to decide what I'd do on that particular day, all I knew was that I had to do _something_ to show that I remembered, that it wasn't just another circled date on that calendar.

Early on I decided that sitting around moping was the worst possible I could spend it, that was more Batman's thing than mine, and as much as I respected him, Batman wasn't something I ever wanted to be. Going back to Gotham got crossed off the list as well, going all the way there to put some flowers on a grave, then spending the rest of the time walking on eggshells against someone who'd be in an even worse mood than usual seemed wrong.

I knew I wouldn't want people to remember me by fighting and throwing blame around, so I wouldn't make that the way he was remembered.

It felt weird walking around Jump without my mask on, my hair missing it's usual smothering of cheap hair-gel. As far as I could I wouldn't be spending that day as Robin, Batman would mourn the other Robin, the good soldier, someone other than Alfred should be mourning the boy under the mask, and I'd do it without mine.

With Ravens help the rest of the team was back on its feet, not at full fighting strength, but they would be soon and Slade hadn't been heard from in days. I should have been worried, but I didn't have to fight, I didn't have to be Robin twenty-four seven. Dick Grayson had a few hours to walk down the streets of Jump City.

A little bell rang when I pushed open the door of a dusty antique shop and I waved meekly at the old clerk before moving inside.

"Can I help you with something young man?" He asked, something about the way he said it, along with his neat clothes an penciled mustache reminded me vaguely of Alfred, even with the suspicious gleam in his eyes.

"I'm looking for a gift." I said, keeping my posture as open and friendly as I could. Not many kids my age would go looking in a place like that, so he had the right to be surprised. "My little brother likes old-timey things, like music boxes and stuff."

"How old is he?" The man asked, getting up from his plush seat.

"Ten." I said, he'd be ten forever now, wouldn't he?

"I see, can you give a little more to work with than ' _old-timey'?"_ He said the words with an edge of disapproval in his voice and I held up my hands in a kind of surrender.

"Books, I guess." One of the few conversations I'd had with the kid was about the book collecting thing I'd never been able to get into with Bruce and Alfred. "And, just, history stuff. Something really old and rusty." He would have liked something like that, right? He'd had that one extra credit history project he'd been so proud about.

The clerk was kind of grouchy, but he guided me through the stores moldy collection and helped me pick out some things that I could tell he didn't really think a little boy would like. A really old copy of _'The picture of Dorian Grey'_ and a tiny music box on a string that played a tune he said was called _'Toreador March.'_

I thanked him and calmly began my walk back to the Titans tower, taking the time to rest at a park before I changed and went back to the tower.

I'd gotten the idea from Starfire. One day, Raven had been explaining Earth holidays to her and they'd come to the topic of Halloween and it's variations. Raven told her how some cultures left out gifts to appease wicked spirits. Star, being herself, had asked why people didn't do the same for kind spirits.

It was a simple question, and Raven had given her a very eloquent explanation, but I hadn't really heard it, too busy thinking up ways of applying it to my own situation.

The quiet of the park was almost soothing, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't totally safe, feeling a prickling at the back of my neck that I could only brush off as paranoia for so before I started to pay attention. A group of children were playing, tossing a ball around while their parents watched.

It was normal, so very normal. Maybe that's why I felt uneasy, like something was watching me, and judging me for daring to me so normal.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when my return to the tower was met with loud questions about where I'd been and what I'd been doing. All framed as "Did you find anything out," and "What do you think I should look into next." Still, it was kind of jarring, and _'my'_ first instinct was to ask if something had happened while I was out.

If something had happened, that would have been the first thing they told me, so I pushed that down managed an easy smile while I walked past them into the kitchen.

"I was out shopping." I said, peering into the fridge for something that couldn't be labeled _'miscellaneous ooze'._ With a grimace I noticed the tofu-meat concoction was still in there, and had garnered a considerable amount of mould, hopefully Starfire wouldn't make the same discovery.

"Shopping for crime?" Beastboy asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

That got a mostly genuine chuckle from me, which in turn got me a pout from my green skinned team mate.

"No, shopping for antiques." I replied, biting into some stale pizza I found at the back of the fridge.

"Antiques for the fighting of crime?" Starfire asked, her voice a mixture of confusion and playfulness that I'd only really seen from her.

"There's some freaky ancient, end-of-the world mojo in that bag, isn't there?" Cyborg pointed accusingly at parcel swung over my shoulder.

"Nope, just a present for someone back in Gotham." I studied the other teens gathered around me in the kitchen while I chewed. Cyborg wasn't really a teen anymore, in a few years none of us would be. We'd have to change the name then, wouldn't we? "Speaking of Gotham, I…"

"Is it for Batman?" Beastboy asked excitedly, one hand balled into a fist near his chin while the other reached for the parcel.

"Hey, if you guys are well enough to interrogate me you should be well enough to get some work done." I moved to the computer and brought up some files. "There've been a string of high tech robberies the past few nights. I can't tell yet if it's the work of some new group or an old villain, so you guys need to… Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You're not sending us after Slade?" Raven asked.

"Until we find out where he is there's nowhere for me to send you to." I held back a sigh and patted resisted the urge to run my hand through my gelled up hair. "If we ignore the other crimes in the city we've as good as let him win, that's not happening this time."

I'd be lying if I said I was a little irritated at them for thinking I couldn't handle myself just because that man was back in jump, and that made me hate him even more. In the past I'd hunted him with what bordered in obsession, but this time I just wanted him gone, and I wanted it before he tried something or sicked his little apprentice on my friends again. There was still nothing I could do until he actually showed up again, by that time, all I'd be able to do was adapt and control the damage.

I didn't want to have to deal with a city in chaos on top of that.

Robin asked me once why I wasn't a hero, why I chose to steal and make a public nuisance of myself instead of fight for the greater good and all that. It was easy for them, set up a tower or a satellite in the sky and go out to fight crime.

It wasn't like that for everyone. When you devoted yourself to answering every call for help it just hurt more when there were ones you couldn't do anything about. Believe me it hurt. Some people could deal with it, people like Robin and his Teen Titans, but were always people who just couldn't.

Going mad with grief isn't nearly as fun as it sounds. Granted, being the walking definition of apathy wasn't a ball either, but at there was way more comedy that tragedy in my world, and I liked it that way.

My feet padded silently across the ' _infallible'_ security system surrounding the newest version of _'cutting edge'_ Kord Tech computer tech. I myself was pretty sure I'd seen something way more advanced at a certain space station once, but whatever. An invisible glove scooped up the chip while another set a weighted rock in its place.

You'd think with the circles he ran in, Ted would have thought to get a better system than lasers and pressure plates. I really am doing the guy a favor pointing these things out before someone really bad got something really good.

I got out without incident, the studying the chip it the pale moonlight. It was such a tiny thing, but worth so much, I wasn't sure just yet what I'd do with it. There'd be plenty of buyers, but I just used fencing as a way to get some of the social interaction I knew I needed, you need to talk to sell you know.

The safe house Slade trashed had a whole stash of goodies I'd been too last to do anything with, even if they'd there forever, it kind of sucked that a psycho got his hands on them.

I tucked the chip safely in my utility belt and teleported over the last few motion sensors set around the area. That suit, I flexed my hands in the heavy duty, but still flexible, gloves. I'd never loved an inanimate object so much. Lightweight, strong, easy to repair and with more tricks than a swiss-army knife from space. If I were any more sentimental, I would have hugged it.

Maybe I would anyway, when I didn't have company.

"Titans go!" This time called by Cyborg and not their usual spiky-haired leader.

That right there, the adrenaline rush as I ducked a swipe from a tiger and covered Beastboy in slime that I knew from experience took forever to get rid of, that was why I wasn't a hero. I mean, how do you give something like that to put yourself though years of trauma?

"Arg, no!" Beastboy yelled, tugging at his sticky hair.

I was in Cyborg's personal space seconds later, only Ravens quick intervention keeping me from hacking through his systems and taking him out. The breath was knocked out of me by the manhole cover she tossed hard enough to send me crashing into the side if the building.

Glass crunched under my feet and gloves when I had to cartwheel away from Starfire's sparkly balls of death. On landing I grabbed hold of a street light and kept up my momentum to spin around and kick the princess away from me, before flipping away from the glass shards Raven sent my way.

Huh, had me thinking that all the time spent running from the league wasn't that much of a waste after all, then Cyborg's sonic cannon knocked me into a dumpster across the street.

Being outnumbered sucked, and I had some foul smelling liquid right in the face. The mask's face anyway, thankfully whatever it was didn't actually touch me.

"You kids want to play dirty?" I asked, the voice modulator smoothing out the edge of excitement in my voice. "Let's play dirty." They closed in on me, and I was still as I waited for them to get just close enough.

Raven got a face full of gooey adhesive before they even got a good look at me, then I got Starfire and Beastboy tangled together in a tough steel cable. I grappled out of Cyborg's reach, somersaulting onto a streetlight before I shot myself back and planted my feet on his torso.

When he took more than a few seconds to get up I was pretty disappointed, I mean I'd spent a lot of time baiting them into the fight, for it to be over so fast was a bit of a letdown. Mini Slade must have done more of a number on them than I'd thought.

"You're off your game tonight." I twisted away from another blast of the oldest Titan's cannon. "Where's your leader?" I got in close again and got my blade blocked by his tough metal arm.

"Too busy to deal with you!" Cyborg pushed me away roughly and set about trying to shoot me again.

"Should I be offended?" The blade I tossed lodged in left elbow joint and I focused the rest of my attacks on that side. Maybe I was offended, but just a teeny, tiny bit, but I wasn't going to show it. I don't deliver messages though proxies, part of that whole lack of socialization thing.

"Don't see why, you've got ' _my'_ full attention." He made a grab for me that I narrowly ducked.

"Not interested." I dodged another of his punches and pulled on his arm, tipping him off balance. He fell to the ground with a loud _'thunk'_ and I slapped a card on his back with some adhesive before dancing out of his reach. "Tell the kid I said hello." A simple flip of a switch later and I was invisible on a rooftop blocks away.

I watched the Titans pick themselves up off the ground and head back to their tower. Maybe I _did_ feel a little bad for the trouble Slade was giving them…

No I didn't, but I couldn't just let the guy get away with wrecking my stuff either, right?


	5. Strange Pharmaceuticals

"You know, you could have found another way to get my attention." I walked across the rooftops, towards the huge WAYNE letters where Red X was reclining in the center of the A.

"Tried them, you've been really busy. Haven't you, Kid?" I could practically hear the smirk in his voice as he calmly slipped from his perch to land silently on the ground.

"Call Richard Grayson for a good time, seriously?" I tossed him the card he'd stuck to Cyborg's back a night ago.

Only the barest tilt of his head showed that he watched the cards descent to the ground. "It'd not my fault you don't trust them enough to tell them." He crossed his arms. "You're not as surprised as I thought you'd be."

"Only so much you could have known without that being one of them, and I doubt questioning you about how would help…" I let the unspoken question linger in the air.

"Trust me, you don't want to know." He said. "No one else is going to find out the way I did. Anyway, we're getting off topic here." He pulled a flash drive out of his utility belt. "I've got the cheat sheet to Mister Wilson's test, I'll share if you do my homework."

"Well how much homework do you have, I've got some family matters I'll have to finish up before I can get started." I didn't bother making a grab for the flash drive, for all I knew, it was just an empty piece of hardware he was trying to bait me with. "And I've still got my reputation you know, don't want to get sent to the principal's office."

"Don't worry, we'll call it a group assignment, I'll even pull my weight, just don't have all the required materials." He tucked the drive back out of sight. "Want the answer to the first question, I'll trade you if you take a quick look at something."

"How do I know it's really the first question?"

He held up three fingers and lackadaisically waved his left arm out. I didn't have any time to ask when a building in that general area shook on its foundations, the BOOM sending out tremors that I felt even blocks away.

I'd taken two steps toward the explosion when my communicator went off and Red X grabbed hold of my cape.

"It's him." The thief said seriously. "Here's the question. Mini-Slade is in that building, along with his _'Master'_ ," He practically choked out the word. "Do you A: Take your team into a fight they're not prepared for? Or B: Come along with the trained stranger to investigate."

," He practically choked out the word. "Do you A: Take your team into a fight they're not prepared for? Or B: Trust the trained stranger to be your backup and investigate yourself." He gave the communicator in my hand a pointed look before taking a step away and holding up his hands a pacifying gesture. "This one'll take more subtlety than they're capable of, but it's your choice Boy Wonder."

I kept my eyes trained on him as I flicked on the comm., "Robin here, the explosions a diversion, I'm sending you all co-ordinates of the most likely targets, split up and proceed with caution." I typed in some locations as far from the building as you could get without leaving the city and got a chorus of replies before putting the device away again. "That the right answer?" I asked, ignoring the stab of pain in my chest telling me that no, it really wasn't.

"We'll see." Red X shot out a line and took off ahead of me for the now quiet crime scene.

I followed after, keeping a good distance between us as we swung across Jump City's skyline. On top of keeping my friends away from Slade for just a little while longer, I took the chance to pry as much information from the thief as I could. We touched down across the street from our destination, pulling out our binoculars in sync.

"How did you get the cheat sheet?" I whispered as I watched scanned the building for any promising heat signatures. There were a lot of people working over time that night, though from their positions I figured they weren't in any immediate danger from Slade's attack, I hoped I'd be able to keep it that way.

"Some friends of mine." He lowered his binoculars to adjust some dials near the top before going back to scoping out the building. "Got shot at a few times, those Al Ghul's don't play with these things I'll tell you that."

"There's a smaller one on the sixteenth." I looked over at my partner for the night. "Any plans?"

"Wouldn't have come along without. They're won't be on the sixteenth long, Hugo Pharmaceuticals keeps their Stirkonite on a hidden section just before the basement." He pointed back at the building where a few of the heat signatures, including the small one, were descending rapidly. "We've just found the elevator, come on."

Getting into the building was easy, way more easy than it should have been, which made us way more cautious that we would have been under different conditions. There were very few security systems which really shouldn't have been surprising, aside from junkies who would go through so much effort to rob a pharmaceuticals manufacturer? Sure there were some super-villains who were way into psychology, but most of them made their own… no way.

"Why's it called Hugo Pharmaceuticals?" I asked as Red X scanned the seemingly normal office for any surveillance equipment.

"Because no one would by medicine from a place called Strange Pharmaceuticals." He exaggerated rolling his eyes and I resisted the urge to mimic him.

"And the Stirkonite?" We didn't take the elevator itself, choosing instead to grapple down the shaft which made it easier to conceal our arrival.

"Named after the first person it was tested on, in secret naturally." His voice was just loud enough for me to hear and I replied just as quietly.

"Naturally?" In Gotham at least , everybody knew who Cornelius Stirk was. A cannibalistic serial killer wasn't easily erased from the collective consciousness of even a city that often saw worse. As bad as experimenting on him was, there weren't many people who would have cared.

"Was supposed to cure anxiety, had some other… side effects." Red X continued. "And no, if you didn't even know who Slade is, there's no way your metal friend can get into the data bases that'll tell you these things."

My hands tightened on my line, not because I was defensive of Red X thinking Cyborg couldn't get the job done, but because I hadn't even considered asking my friend to try. "Like what?" I kept my voice level.

"That's enough free questions." He said. "You'll wish you knew less when this is over."

Being a place that worked with chemicals, Hugo Pharmaceuticals had a lot of very wide, very spacious air vents to carry off any escaping fumes, Red X and I used these to follow the small group of heat signatures through the sub-level discretely.

"… aware that the substance isn't as stable as we would have liked." A scrawny man was saying to Slade as he shut the door of the sterile looking room they'd entered. "Negating the effects after long term use has proved, shall we say, difficult." I angled my head to see as much of the room as possible without being visible myself, but couldn't make out most of the room.

"That's not an issue." Slade moved to a corner where he could watch the room while a woman picked his small apprentice up and set the boy on a steel table where he settled with a feint huff.

"I trust there have been no hiccups in the design?" Slade asked the only one in the room not wearing a lab coat.

"Moving smoothly for the most part, but we've yet to recover the missing machine core, the trackers went offline near the docks and we have personnel looking into it." The tall man was typing away on a tablet, seemingly oblivious to what the doctors were doing. "In my opinion it's already been stripped and sold in pieces as scrap."

"You'll do well to keep such opinions to yourself." Slade said as the wall next to him slid up, revealing a smaller room behind a glass screen.

"As for the devices, there are naturally some design flaws at this time, but this one was surprisingly the easiest to construct…" The man began explaining the design specifications of some machine they were working on and I set my recorder as near as I dared so I could go over it again later.

"Pulse strong." A doctor called out as she rolled the boy's glove back down, and got a stethoscope to check his heartbeat. I heard him suck in a breath at the cold metal touching his skin, and she chuckled, one hand starting towards where his head would have been before stopping half way.

"We're still having some trouble with the aeration clogging up, the tech side is trying to make the pipes larger without compromising the effectiveness, they assure us it's a minor problem and they'll have it ready ahead of schedule." He typed some more on the tablet and tilted it towards Slade. "Projections show the loss of the KORD industries beacon could stall production if a replacement isn't aquired in the next few weeks."

"Have your people locate one and I'll send my apprentice to retrieve it." Slade's offhanded comment shifted my attention briefly to the partially visible boy across the room.

The physical continued, the woman only pausing when she removed his helmet and set it down on the table besides her patient with a soft _'clack'._ I tried again to get a better view of the room and groaned internally when I couldn't.The button on her penlight clicked as she shone it into what I guessed was his ear. He squirmed a little when she moved on to his eyes and went "uhh" when she told him to open his mouth.

"We've already found a suitable replacement, but the security is best tackled by a professional, the child chances of surviving such a stunt are slim." The tall man flinched at Slade's glare and turned the movement into a shrug at the last second. "Of course I leave such matters to your discretion. Lex Corp has recently released a solvent intended for space exploration crafts, and we've negotiated a price…"

"But?" Slade's eyes were fixed on the other side of the glass.

"We were hoping you could talk him down a few million dollars, out budget is stretched too tightly to afford both it and Calculators virus." His shaky hands fiddled with his glasses.

I tried again to get a better view of the room, and groaned internally when I couldn't. "How are you feeling?" She asked.

"Okay." His hands meshed together on his lap and he made a little noise like he'd started saying something else but cut himself off, the padding on his gloves creaking softly.

At first I was kind of relieved that Slade cared at least enough to make sure the kid got regular checkups, and judging by how familiar the doctors were with him they had to be regular. Then Red X nudged me and pointed to one of those whose actions weren't obscured by the bad angle.

This man was filing a syringe with a bright purple liquid. For the first time, Slade stepped towards his apprentice. He held the boy in place as the doctor approached. Ice shot up my spine as the boy, who'd been still and quiet since he'd entered the room, tensed up. Small hands clenched and unclenched as the needle drew closer. At the last second, he tried to pull away, but Slade's grip was firm and the needle sank into the child's neck.

The boy's only further protest was a whimper as the doctor pressed down the plunger, a few moments later and the tension drained out of him. His body went limp and he almost slumped over, giving me a look at the tears dripping off his chin before Slade pulled him up by his cape.

I barely noticed the woman repeating the physical, only how quiet he was being the second time around.

A glance at Red X showed the thief as composed as ever, and as much as I hated it, I knew going along with him instead of my team had been a good call. There wasn't one of them who would have been able hold off from attacking right then.

"How are you feeling?" The woman asked again, this time with an edge to her voice as the boy picked up his helmet with steady hands.

"Okay." He answered. I only picked up on how shaky his voice had been before when I heard how steady it was then. Slade lifted him by his cape, and I got the tiniest glimpse of his face before the room disappeared.

Red X's grip on my arm was painfully tight, his other hand closing over my mouth to muffled the shout I hadn't really noticed I was about to let out.

"What was that?!" I demanded, the crisp air atop the Wayne building stinging my face in stark contrast to the stuffy vent.

"Me stopping you from blowing your cover over that kid." Red X stretched out the stiffness that came with spending hours in tight spaces. "There's no way they'll think that was rats now." The regret in his voice about as real as the Easter bunny

"I was trying to get a better look at the room." I kept my hands loose at my sides while trying to push down the heat of adrenaline flooding my veins.

He watched me from where he was leaning against the letter N, outwardly calm as anything, not even the tiniest lick of tension in his shoulders. "They would have picked up on the hacked sensors in a few minutes anyway." He shrugged. "I'll see you when you get back from your family get together, see you then." He waved and started to walk off.

"Wait." I called and he paused, looking at me over his shoulder. "The first question on you cheat sheet?"

"Hmm" He hooked a finger at his chin like he was deep in thought. "A look at the baddies operation wasn't enough for you, huh?"

"They were your terms." I reminded him, if our goals crossed over enough that spying on Slade was beneficial to him too that was just a bonus,

"Okay, question one: Why were the original Stirkonite experiments scrapped and if you had your metal friend look the stuff up, why didn't he find them, or did he?" Red X reached for his belt and was gone.

Hugo Pharmaceuticals was visible from my high vantage point and I staked it out for another few hours, watching closely for when Slade left. The sky lightened, pinks and oranges replacing the starry sky before I gave up and conceded that he came and went from the place via a secret entrance.

If Red X was right and they'd figured out by now someone had been spying on them, Slade would be gone already, and if he used the same building again the security would be upgraded to keep anyone from getting in the same way again.

My comm beeped just as I was setting up some of my own cameras around the buildings exterior.

"Did you find anything?" I asked without checking to see which one was calling.

"We found glue, lots of glue, all of us. Dude where are you?" Beastboy's voice cracked with either irritation or worry.

"I'm setting up some cameras, ask Cyborg to hook them up on a closed system, I'll be home in an hour." I balanced the shoulder on my shoulder as I spoke, my hands occupied with holding both my line and the tolls for the surveillance equipment.

"Fiiine." Beastboy groaned before calling out. "Hey Cyborg…" he called out before the line clicked off.

I maneuvered my comm back into my pocket, thinking that I should have looked into a hands-free communicator as well.

.

.

.

It turned out that when Beastboy said they'd found glue, he hadn't meant in containers.

When I got back to the tower I was treated to the sight of the team gathered around the table, all of them with a few sticky patches of reddish glue still stuck to their hair and skin. The usual breakfast debates suspended in favor of their new common enemy.

Being the only one who hadn't shared their misfortune, that common enemy quickly became me.

"Sorry everyone, I didn't mean to get you all into such a sticky situation without backup." I struggled to bite back my snickers at the sight despite their heated glares. Okay, I really wasn't helping my case any, but I was running on hardly any sleep, and it was the one day I'd promised I'd be a little more cheerful.

"You knew." Raven's usually blank face was twisted into an accusatory frown.

"And now you decide is the time for the bad jokes." Starfire added on, her whole body arched as she shot towards me, one of her slender fingers pressed against my nose and I leaned back instinctively as she hissed. "Now is not the time for the bad jokes Robin."

"Yeah dude, I wasn't even finished getting rid of the gunk from the last time." Beastboy tugged at his hair.

I cleared my throat and bent backwards awkwardly to slip past Starfire and bypass getting too close to Raven. "So, any idea who set the…" I waved my hand in a circle at my sticky team. "Super glue trap?"

"I thought it was Red X, but seeing how the creep didn't steal anything last night I guess it wasn't" Beastboy poked miserably at his toast.

"And Chang wouldn't have set up something that harmless." Raven said.

"So it's either a new player, or we triggered the trap early." I got to the fridge and got another look Starfire's left over mush, now completely covered in blue mold, before I hurriedly grabbed an apple and closed it. When I turned back to the team they were putting up a united front, their glares all directed at me.

"And our leader just happened to be off on his own while we got stuck in it?" Cyborg crossed his arms. "Where were you?"

"I got held up." I gripped the apple and tried not to look too defensive. "You can't really believe I had something to do with that."

"I don't know, you are the guy that developed this stuff." Cyborg gestured to the glue on his arm. "And it just happened to be when Slade's around too."

I wished I could have been more surprised that they suspected me of deliberately luring them into the trap, but I knew they had the right. It wasn't the first time, and it probably wouldn't be the last either. I should have confessed, told them I was sorry, that I hadn't know Red X's trap would bother them so much.

None of that would have been true. Instead of feeling guilty, I was frustrated that I'd had to trust someone else, a thief of all people because I couldn't protect them on my own. Because Slade had timed his arrival for the worst possible time of year and there and he knew it.

I don't know whether they took my silence as confirmation, or a denial, but Raven broke it before I did.

"You have to admit Robin, you have been feeling off." She said softly.

Feeling, not acting, sometimes living with an empath made it really hard to keep anything private. It wasn't her fault, or theirs for worrying but there were things they didn't need to know about.

"It has nothing to do with Slade." I set the apple down on the counter without taking a bite. "And I didn't cover you all in glue." I had to push a little to get past them.

"Where are you going now?" Beastboy asked.

"To bed." I called, but didn't look back.

I heard them talking before I was completely out of earshot, but ignored them and went right for my room. My curtains stayed closed, the only light coming from the screen saver flickering across the computer monitors.

As inviting as the bed looked, I sank into the chair instead and turned my attention to the screens. Only a few minutes later there was a hesitant tap at my door. Only one person in the tower knocked like that.

"You can come in Star." I said and turned my chair towards her.

She stepped inside hesitantly and paused before coming all the way over to me.

"I have come to apologize." She said, wringing her hands in front of her. "I should not have accused you of being untruthful, but…"

"It's okay Star." All the guilt I should have felt in the kitchen washed over me, smothering the little anger that still lingered. "I haven't been acting like myself."

"No you have not." She took a step towards my bed and stopped to look at me before sitting down. "If you say it is not because of Slade's return, I will believe you, but I wish you would tell me why you are behaving this way. Perhaps that way we can address the issue."

I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my face. I knew it wasn't the most mature thing, but I'd always done my best to keep Gotham and Jump City separate in the same way I did Dick Grayson and Robin. They were easier to deal with when I wasn't dealing with them together.

"It's not an issue that can be addressed." I said at last. "And I don't want you worrying about something there's nothing you can do anything to change."

"We cannot know that for sure if we do not try." She said. "Please Robin, Friend Raven has said that your unhappiness had been…"

"And I wish she would stop telling you guys these things." I tugged a hand through my hair, turning the spikes into a messy nest. "I don't want to talk about this Starfire." I really, really didn't, not with anyone, but especially not with my team, the few people in that city that didn't seem to know already. There was a lie on this tip of my tongue, something to placate her, make them all trust me again, but I couldn't say it.

"It makes you angry that she shares these things with us? I don't understand." Starfire was confused, of course she was. Someone like her, who wore her heart on her sleeve wouldn't have been able to understand why I wouldn't want them involved. It made lying seem so much harsher than if anyone else had been asking me.

"That she tells you all without coming to me about it first." I said moving over to my closet and rifling through it. I got out a locked briefcase and brought it back to the bed. "I'll tell you about it, but only if you promise to wait until I'm ready to let them know."

She nodded, but kept quiet, as though she thought saying something would have made me stop, and who knew, maybe it would have.

"I never told anyone, but there used to be another Robin." I unlocked the case, it was the only thing in the tower that was Dick Grayson's alone, the only bit of Robin in it was one scrap of paper and that Robin wasn't the one talking to Starfire. I took out that one paper and slammed the case shut right after, pushing it under my bed where it was out of sight.

"Two Robins?" Her face scrunched up and she took the paper in her hands. I didn't look at, someone else would be staring at it enough that day, or worse at the morbid display case. "X'hal!" She held it closer to her face. "He is so very small." She chuckled and ran a finger across the picture.

It brought a smile to my face, that the picture could bring some measure of happiness to someone, even as her words made it feel like there was lead sinking into my stomach. "He was."

"Robin." She rested a hand on my shoulder, hearing my shift on tone. "You say that because he has grown?"

I shook my head, not confident to try speaking around the knot in my throat.

"No." She breathed out the word. For all her confusion at the strange new planet she found herself on, Starfire was far from stupid. A princess of a literal warrior race, she knew exactly what I was unable to tell her. Her warm arms wrapped around me. "When?"

"A year ago." I choked the words out. "While we were on Tamaran, I didn't find out until after."

"Robin, you should not have attempted to carry this burden alone." She said, patting my head. I wanted to feel comforted, glad she understood and didn't ask me to explain anymore than I had, but I just felt a little peeved that she was messing up my hair even more. "There is no shame in your mourning, our friends would understand."

"Don't tell them." I said, gently pulling out of her hug, but letting her keep one hand on my shoulder. "Just let them know it's not about Slade."

"If that is what you wish, but Robin," here she cupped my head in her hands, brushing aside the salty liquid I didn't even notice was tricking down my face with the pads of her thumbs. "You will speak to me of him a little? Perhaps it will ease your suffering to have a friend mourning beside you."

I managed a smile as I freed my head wiped away the lingering tear streaks with my arm, the spirit gum keeping the mask up was itchy when it got wet, I'd have to reapply it later. "Sure, but I think I need some sleep first."

"After then." She hopped off the bed kissed my cheek. "I will go and calm the others while you rest. Sleep well, friend."

I shut down the computers, making sure to erase the history before I got ready for bed. It didn't take me long to fall asleep, but I was vaguely surprised by what my last thoughts were of, even if I didn't remember them later.


End file.
